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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/30069267">The Scientist and Her Unwanted Associate</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/Bumblewish/pseuds/Bumblewish'>Bumblewish</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Portal (Video Game)</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Aperture Tag Prequel, Aperture Tag takes place before Art Therapy, Fact Core and Wheatley are only mentioned, GLaDOS both hates and fears Nigel simultaneously, GLaDOS has developed severe paranoia towards the cores, Gen, Headcanon, I'm surprised that's an unused tag, It's implied that Rick is in space although he's not even mentioned, Nigel is oblivious, Post-Portal 2, Pre-Art Therapy, Unethical AI's Doing Unethical Things</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2021-03-15</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2021-03-15</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-15 18:33:29</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Teen And Up Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>498</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/30069267</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/Bumblewish/pseuds/Bumblewish</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>GLaDOS' victory over finding the human vault is cut short when a certain Testing Associate Core decides to ping her.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>GLaDOS &amp; Nigel</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>5</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>The Scientist and Her Unwanted Associate</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>Technically, this entire one-shot was inspired by a comment I was making on another fic about Nigel by someone else.</p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>GLaDOS had always distrusted Aperture’s Personality Cores. Being stuck with four of them after finally disposing of the scientists only intensified that distrust. However, the breaking point occurred many years after she was finally rid of those four... <i>tumors</i>. </p>
<p>	That moron with the blue optic, who went by Wheatley for some inane reason, was, as the humans would say, the final straw. She gave him mercy and was willing to forget about that inconvenience when they first met. Well, technically, it was their second meeting, but she didn’t recognize him until after he had put her mind into a potato battery. Of course the moron didn’t catch on and because of that, the entire facility was almost blown up via nuclear meltdown within the next two days. After that, GLaDOS decided that she was no longer taking any more chances with the multitude of Personality Cores. </p>
<p>	She had distanced herself from all cores the moment she dropped the Fact Core onto a management rail in begrudging acknowledgement, so when a Testing Associate Core tried to get in contact with her, she felt rather irked about it. He had first pinged her while she was sorting through the human vault’s contents. At first, she wanted to ignore him and get to testing, but then the core became rather insistent, trying to ping her again every ten minutes. She was already thin on patience and it only took an hour for her to actually respond. </p>
<p>	The Testing Associate Core ended up being worse than what GLaDOS was expecting and she didn’t know whether that surprised her or not after everything she went through. From an outside perspective, the core was quite standard if not too enthusiastic. To GLaDOS, however, the core was just too similar to a certain moron in lunar orbit. </p>
<p>The most obvious similarity to the moron was that this Testing Associate Core had chosen a name for himself: Nigel. Nigel also shared his enthusiasm with the moron. The worst trait Nigel had, GLaDOS had decided, was his love for testing. Perhaps, if she had destroyed a certain moron when she had the chance, GLaDOS and Nigel could have been good friends. Instead, all GLaDOS saw in Nigel was an echo of a moron’s destruction.  </p>
<p>GLaDOS was quite worried that if she sent Nigel away it would result in another nuclear meltdown at some point in the next week, so she quickly made some accommodations. She gave him a testing track, placing it in a remote part of the facility and sacrificed a dozen humans to be his unwilling test subjects. She only had one warning: if any of the humans were to outsmart him, send them to the surface. She refused to tell him why when he asked.</p>
<p>It was all for science, she would reassure herself as she dismissed Nigel to his new track. Besides, she had almost a thousand more humans that she needed to start testing with and <i>oh… was that the prototype chassis?</i></p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>I honestly believe that GLaDOS doesn't think highly of the cores and the feelings are only intensified after her experiences with Morality, Anger, Curiosity, Logic, and Wheatley. I also believe that, at first, GLaDOS was terrified that another core would do what Wheatley did so she distanced herself from all of the cores. I feel like this would explain why she would act so generous towards cores who remind her of Wheatley. </p>
<p>I think GLaDOS wouldn't address the events of "Portal Stories: Mel" for months and do nothing about Virgil's actions which she would normally take as transgressions against her. Nigel got his testing track because GLaDOS was afraid of what would happen if she refused him and perhaps some other cores got some extra mercy as well.</p></blockquote></div></div>
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